Speaker: Cleaning and sanitation around the Brewery is extremely, extremely important. What is important to keep in mind that this is not only food for yeast; this is food for every microbe that is out there. This is the stuff that every bacteria loves to get their hands on, every wild yeast in the air loves to get their hands on, and our yeast is basically one of the microorganism that are competing for that food. It is therefore very, very important that first of all that the entire process is a clean one, but it's extremely important that form a certain point in the process, that sanitary conditions are maintained.
As a matter of fact in a brewery, you will often find and this is true also in brewing at home, you will often find that most -- the vast majority of the time that you spend on the brewing process, is actually spent on cleaning. Towards that end, okay if you are brewing at home, then you are brewing on smaller tanks that are basically easy to lift and you can get in with a brush and you could scrub them and you can clean them, basically just as you would a pot sitting on your stove.
Alright, in a Brewery like this ,you cannot turn the tanks over, you can't creep inside – well, sometimes we creep inside and wash them, but generally speaking you can't wash it by hand. So most breweries like this are equipped with what is called a CIP System or Cleaning Place System which allows us by using a combination of chemicals and sanitizers to clean everything, and to make sure that it has been sanitized properly.
The Brew Kettle, and basically everything here – these tanks over here comprise what's called the Brew House, as oppose to the fermentation room part of the brewery. The Brew House needs to be cleaned, but only parts of the Brew House needs to be absolutely sanitary. Keeping in mind that as part of the process we will be boiling up the wort before, we actually give it to the yeast. So the boiling part of the process will kill whatever sort of contamination might be in the air or anything or circulating around that might have gotten into the beer.
From the time that we cool down that wort, from that point on, every thing has to be absolutely sanitary, because once the wort cools down to below a 140 degrees Fahrenheit, or to 30 degrees Fahrenheit or to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, in that range, then other microorganism can actually jump into our beer and start getting to work on that wort, and start consuming that wort, which will give our beer very, very different flavors then those flavors that we want.
What we have inside our brew kettle, this is one of the tanks that has this, is we have a large spray ball that actually sits inside the kettle, and so after we use the brew kettle, we rinsed it off, and we cleaned it with that caustic soda. What we do is, we hook up the pump up to the brew kettle and we pump the caustic soda to a very high pressure through that spray ball inside the kettle. That sprays the entire tank down and by the time we pop open the tank after that half hour process or so, 20 minute process, it is shining clean.
From the time that we cooled down the wort, that's the time we have to be most concerned with maintaining absolute sanitation –- with sanitary conditions I should say. That happens in our process after we have boiled up our wort, and after we have whirl pooled it in order to clear it. What we then do is, we pump it through our heat exchanger. What that allows to happen, is that by the time that circuit is completed the wort comes out on the other side at about 18 degree Celsius. That's 70 degrees 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and the water that had come in very cold, now comes out at about 60 degrees Celsius.
Okay, from that heat exchanger on the through rest of the process, is where we need to maintain absolute sanitation – absolute sanitary condition. So in addition to doing this cleaning place process, we also pump through our heat exchanger and all the piping after that, a sanitizing solution. We use a solution that is called iodophor, which me mix in twelve-and-half parts per million, but you could also use peracetic acid, you could also use other acceptable sanitizers in the food industry. We like iodophor, because sanitizer meaning we can spread it on, or pump it through, and do not have to rinse it out afterwards.
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